Done for a Dime (14 page)

“Little Russian princess,” he hooted. “Well, ain’t that just it. Go on, run off. Good riddance.”

She backed the car out fast, flipped the headlights on. Toby’s father turned back around toward the three hoods, ready to do whatever. He put a hand in his pocket to suggest a weapon. “Not goin’ down without one of you going with me!”

Nadya slammed to a stop as the car pulled abreast of him, leaned across the passenger seat, flinging the door open. His body responded before he had time to change the look on his face. He barely got the door closed before Nadya jammed the transmission into reverse and, head turned back over her shoulder, gunned the motor. The car sped backward away from their pursuers, who, in frustration, hurled stones.

“You’re good at this,” Toby’s father mused.

At the alley’s end she stopped, lodged the transmission into drive, turned hard, and sped off between parked semitrailers down the side street and away.

“Well now. Where did you learn—”

“I drove a cab.”

“Backwards?”

Nadya headed for the freeway. “One of the older guys. He took me to Sears Point, the high-performance course they teach there.”

Toby’s father went slack-jawed. “You are just one bottomless sack of surprises, young lady, know that?”

“Why did you hit him? Grady Bradshaw. Why him?”

“You hear what he said?”

“It wasn’t him. It was one of the others.”

“Naw, I heard different.” He wiped the sweat from his face. “And don’t you go righteous on me here. You hated him every bit as much as I did.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“Naw, naw, I mean it now. Don’t you start in shaming me, girl. It’s not like I planned to have a bunch of loudmouth rednecks pop up tonight. Grady, no Grady, pretty much all the same, you know? Put some thought under that, why don’t you.”

“I just—” Her voice faltered. She swallowed and tried again. “I hate that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, well.” He folded his hands in his lap. They were shaking. “You hate that kinda thing too much, all you’ll ever do is run from it. And all that means is you’ll spend the better part of your life running.”

•    •    •

“You’re saying the fourth man, or one of these other three—somebody followed you back home,” Murchison said.

“I didn’t see anyone. I was busy, driving, arguing with Mr. Carlisle.”

“Arguing?”

The way Stluka said it made her turn. He was chewing gum now. Maybe he had been all along.

“I was angry at him. I knew how much the night meant to Toby. He had a tribute planned for his father, but—”

“Toby good and irked about that?” Stluka again.

Nadya blinked. “Is Toby in trouble?”

“Toby and Mr. Carlisle, they mixed it up serious earlier tonight,
before
the show, correct?”

“You don’t think Toby—” She looked from one man to the other. “Can I see him? Is he all right?”

“He’s fine,” Murchison said. “He’s at the station.”

“Be a whole lot better,” Stluka said, “once the truth comes out.”

“You want me to tell you Toby had something—That’s insane, you can’t—”

Murchison stopped her. “Go back to what you saw when you looked out the window, saw Mr. Carlisle on the ground. Take your time. Picture it. Clear as you can.”

It was confusing, the two moods, clinical and snide. Feeling less threatened by Murchison, the clinician, she did as he asked, closed her eyes and tried to focus. Shortly she saw the same unchanging thing—Toby’s father at the edge of the dim porch light, facedown in the mud like he’d been dropped from fifty feet up, convulsing in shock, fish-eyed, the hiss of air through his bloody teeth while one hand reached out,
Help me.
Not a memory. Happening all over again, inside her head.

“Try to picture the gate,” Murchison said.

“Toby, don’t forget. He was where?” Stluka added.

Her eyes shot open. “Toby? I don’t know.”

“But home already.” Stluka, pushing.

“No.”

“Francis there, too.”

“No, I told you.” Nadya pulled the covers off her legs and dropped her feet to the floor. “The nurse—”

“Nurse says you’re fine,” Stluka said. “Gave us crap for calling her in the first time, remember?”

“You’re not calling her this time. I am.” She tried to stand. “I have to see the nurse.”

She put weight on her legs, but they gave way. Murchison reached out quick, caught her, saying, “Whoa, whoa.”

“Help me,” she whispered to him. “Please.”

He shrank from her glance, then turned his head, nodded to Stluka.

Stluka didn’t move. “Arlie Thigpen,” he said.

“Who?”

“Arlie Thigpen. Tell us about him. Francis introduced him to Toby. Or was it the other way round?”

She had no idea what he meant. Murchison, still holding her, whispered, “If you know, it could help explain a great deal. I know it’s difficult. Please—”

She tried to squirm free of his hold, couldn’t. Looking up into his face, she saw a gentle and fatherly insistence. But it was a mask. Behind the mask was something unspeakable.

She tore free then, screaming, “I want the nurse!” So loud, she thought, a howl. Not me. But who? She fought through his hands, toppled in a heap to the floor, fending him off with kicks as she ripped at the swath of bandages girding her arm. I do know, she thought, I know, I know—clawing at the tape, wanting her skin, wanting to strip it away next, layer by layer, strip it away to see the blood. See beneath the mask.

Murchison and Stluka hovered over her, dumbstruck. The nurse threw back the door and hurtled in, pushed them aside, kneeling in a rush to grab her wrists and tell her, “Stop. Now—listen to me,
listen to me
—stop this!”

Nadya, blinking, saw the room bathed in a pall of grainy light. As she glanced down, her hand and arm took form before her as a faint growling whimper rose in her throat. Things melted into a welcoming misery, through which, in the background, as though from a different place, a different time, she heard the nurse say, “That’s all for now. Leave. Both of you.”

7

M
urchison got out at the door for Custody Transfer as Stluka triggered the rattling chain-link gate to the parking lot. A stench fouled the air, the usual Sunday morning whiff of aqueous ammonia discharged from the refineries across the strait. Murchison punched in the security code at the dial pad and, once the lock clicked free, walked through to the holding area just beyond the door. It didn’t smell much better inside, but the stench was human, not chemical.

Glancing through the smeary Plexiglas window of each of the cells, he finally spotted Arlie Thigpen alone inside the last lockup. He was skinny and short, all the more boyish because of that, something he no doubt played to good effect in presentencing interviews. He’d pulled the hood of his sweatshirt tight around his face—same as in Hennessey’s Polaroid—his legs tucked up on the bench and his shoulder leaning into the corner as he tried to catch some sleep. How many times, Murchison wondered, have I seen a kid brought in on a killing think a nap would make it all disappear?

He slapped three times hard on the cell’s metal door. Arlie jerked upright, hands swinging fast to his cover his head. Good for you, Murchison thought—at least some part of you knows you’re scared. Peeking through his fingers as he spun his head around, Arlie squinted blearily at the overhead light first, then found the door, meeting Murchison’s eyes through the square of Plexiglas. The boy’s face, with its nettle of white scars around one eye, went blank. Just like that, nobody home. He stayed like that, coiled, watchful, as Murchison drew away.

The overnight custody log bore eight names, but the only one Murchison recognized was Arlie’s. The other seven bodies awaited upcounty transfer, the usual Sunday morning assortment from what Murchison could tell given the code citations listed beside their names: three drunks, two hookers, a wife basher, and a doper. On the blotter where the log rested someone had scrawled in a faint hand:
Johnson’s Law: The Lower the Altitude, the Greater the Reptile Density.

Heading upstairs, he checked his watch to make sure he still had time to catch the end of the change-of-shift walk-through for the Sunday morning crew. The briefing room sat at the top of the stairs, low-ceilinged, small in size and made smaller with the dozen officers crammed inside. They sat wedged shoulder-to-shoulder at three tables surrounding the duty sergeant who stood at a lectern, reading out beat and car assignments. Murchison waited in the doorway till the roll was finished, then whistled softly. Catching his signal, the duty sergeant knocked three times on the side of his lectern and called out in a Central Valley drawl, “Listen, people. Detective wants a word before you head out to your cars.”

A distinct switch in mood settled in. Murchison, feeling like the school principal everyone respected but nobody liked, waited it out. He assumed they’d been briefed on what had happened the preceding night, but decided to run it down again just in case, then added, “From what we know now, it’s possible, maybe likely, the Carlisle murder and the Fielding’s Liquors vandalism are linked. We’re tracking down leads right now, but what I’m going to need from you are want-and-warrant checks on the following names.”

He took out the Polaroid he’d shared with Marcellyne Pathon, its edges already worn, the image thumb-stained. He read the names handwritten on the back—Eshmont Carnes, Michael Brinkman, Waddell Bettencort, J. J. Glenn. He added the names Arlie Thigpen and James “Long Walk” Mooney, noting that one was in custody, the other wasn’t.

“Don’t waste time. As soon as you’re in your cars, crank up the Panasonics. Apply some percussive maintenance if they screw up like usual, but do your checks. Stay in touch with each other so you can lend support if somebody pulls a runner. I want everybody in that crew, all known associates, talked to. And after them, if need be, their mothers, their sisters, their cousins, their friends and neighbors. You bring up eight-fourteens on anybody—they got so much as a fix-it ticket that’s overdue—I want them down here. Lock ‘em up, make ‘em sit. Separate cells if you can—if you can’t, put somebody who’s not in the crew in there with them. They don’t get to work up their stories while they sit down here, not without somebody else in the cell who can tell us about it. And they don’t get transferred upcounty, understand? I find out somebody got processed out and he’s walking around again with nothing but a court date to worry about, I’m gonna have something to say about it.”

He glanced around the room, hoping for a little fervor. Heads nodded, eyes stared, not so much keyed in as just polite. Once upon a time he could have expected more, but with Stluka as a partner his words got taken in ways he could never predict. It had gotten to the point where he had to either explain everything he said five different ways or just say nothing. And the only thing cops distrusted more than a guy who talked too much was someone who said nothing at all.

“If somebody in the crew doesn’t come back active with a want or warrant, go to whatever address you’ve got anyway, drag him out of bed, give him a Beheler, and bring him down. He doesn’t want to come, keep at him. Double up, second uniform talks to the parent, the girlfriend, the roomie, whatever. Apply pressure. Let him know: Silence equals suspicion. We’ll be on him, day and night, till he talks to us. And if we find out he’s lying, we’ll be back.”

Murchison scanned the room, thinking, And by us, I mean me.

“Last, there’s a young man who’s identified himself as the murder victim’s son.”

Finally, a reaction. Eyes danced a little jig, here and there a grin.

“Young man’s name is Toby Marchand. He’s upstairs, and he’s lawyered down.” He let that sink in. “His alibi, for lack of a better word, is an abscond out of South Central, name of Francis Tyrone Templeton. Mr. Templeton is a fugitive at this point. We want him picked up. And we want to know of any connection between him or Toby Marchand and Long Walk Mooney. Or anybody in his crew.”

He pushed off the doorjamb, turned halfway into the hall, then added over his shoulder, “Sorry if that all sounds complicated. But that’s where we’re at.”

Just outside the detective bureau, he pulled up at the last door in the hallway. Easing the door open, he peeked inside. Tony Hussein, the liquor store owner, sat hunched beneath a crane lamp at a broad wood desk, squinting through his eyeglasses at the photo book he’d been given. He’d changed his pajama bottoms for corduroys but for some reason hadn’t bothered to trade the top for a shirt as well. One hand rummaged through his wild hair; the other flipped through the pages of mug shots. He hardly seemed to be looking, just turning pages, like it was punishment.

Murchison knocked gently on the door and ventured in, noticing, as he approached, that the storekeeper hadn’t marked a single head shot. The Post-its he’d been given remained wrapped in their cellophane. Frustrated, Murchison felt tempted to show him Hennessey’s Polaroids, get to the point, but he knew better. They’d have to work up an eight-pack for that.

Taking up position behind the storekeeper’s chair, he prodded, “No luck?”

Tony Hussein squirmed in his seat, nudged his glasses up his nose, and shook his head. “Fucking stupid. Waste my time.” He waved his hands above the books in disgust. “Like I see some guy, okay? Think, I know him, he been inside the store.” He frowned, reached inside his pajama top, and scratched. “Second look? Hey. Not so sure.”

Murchison leaned down, picked up the Post-its, and unwrapped the cellophane. “Even so, keep track of the ones who hit you like that, okay?” With one hand he crumpled the cellophane; the other deposited the Post-its on the desktop beside the photo book. For emphasis, he tapped them twice with his index finger. “Every little bit helps.”

“Yeah, sure, yeah.” A coffee cup rested by the storekeeper’s hand. Peering into it, he grimaced. “This stuff’s worse than the piss I sell at my store, know that?”

“Yes, sir. I do.” Murchison turned and headed back for the door. “But we can’t be undersold.”

•    •    •

Murchison walked slowly down the narrow corridor separating the station’s two interview rooms. Though the rooms themselves opened onto the hallway leading to both the squad room and the detective bureau, you could only enter this corridor between them by going all the way around through a rear passageway. Suspects brought into the rooms through the main area didn’t know this corridor existed.